( salchipapa, a meal at Norky's... Peru fast food!)

(Papa Chavez gets us special privileges!)

Day 3 in Peru (Central Lima)

Yesterday Claudia, Papa Chavez, David and Carol took a taxi to Central Lima (downtown). The taxi stopped to get gas (the first time I've been in a taxi that stopped to get gas!) and it was interesting to note that some cars use natural gas here, which is piped into the front engine. It's to help the pollution supposedly... which is SO bad here!

On the way downtown we saw this young man doing soccer tricks on the crosswalk to the cars waiting for coins.... I would not want to be lying on the streets here - too dangerous!!!

We saw la catacomba (the catacombs) in the Monasterio de San Francisco. There is a monastery, church, and underneath it all - the catacombs. It was built int 1672! The catacombs used to be where they buried everyone - there are 25,000 remains underneath the church. (That's what I heard during the tour, but our Lonely Planet book says 70,000) The conservationists rearranged the bones for display for some crazy reason, as seen here.

The catacombs are beneath the church.. as you're walking through the church, which was large and beautiful with a ceiling made of a Peruvian bamboo like material to withstand earthquakes, there were some metal grates in the floor of the church through which you could see the bones beneath in the catacomb. Claudia asked a monk for me if we could take his picture but he said, "No, I'm not famous." The monks wore brown robes with rope around their waist.

Outside the church there were hundreds of pidgeons that people came to feed.

Dave & Papa Chavez in front of the church.

There was a huge painting of the last supper in the monastery - but a Peruvian version, much different from European paintings. The last supper in the painting is around a round table... the servers are children to represent innocence.. the devil peers in a window to the upper right of Jesus overtop of Judas.. and the food they are eating in the picture is... drumroll... guinea pigs and cerviche! Two very Peruvian dishes. :)

The library in the monastery contains the first Spanish dictionary, as well as the original Gutenburg printing press's Bible! Although there were no photographs allowed, we took some sneaky shots!!

This is the residence of the Peruvian Presedente, Alan Garcia.

And this is the fountain where come Independance Day it is filled with Pisco Sour, the national alcoholic beverage.

We took a double decker tour bus around Central Lima, but it was not that good - there were noisy belligerent American teenagers behind us and we couldn't hear the tour guide - who was speaking in Spanish any way, even though they said some was in English - only about 10 words were! It started to get dark, and rain, and we were cold on top of the bus. By rain, I mean the only rain that ever happens in Lima - mist. It never rains here, only mists. When we got stuck in traffic on the tour bus we decided that was enough - we asked to be let off and we were closer to home that way anyway!

Mount Christopher